now on bbc news, panorama. 999 (all: police emergency. hello. there's been an explosion at manchester arena. is anybody injured? yes, loads. a bomb'sjust gone off, there's people lying around on the floor, there's blood everywhere. please send ambulances, please. we're coming as fast as we can, 0k. - on 22nd may 2017, a bomb exploded at an ariana grande concert in manchester. 22 people were murdered. 8—year—old saffie—rose roussos was the youngest victim. she just had a heart of love. i am the champion. she just was enthusiastic

about everything. - as the fifth anniversary of the attack approaches, saffie would now be 13 years old. sometimes my mind will go, "she's died" and it's like a house dropping on you. we talk about her all the time. she's in our hearts so and she's not going anywhere. tonight, saffie's parents tell their full story for the first time. for us, as a family, we need to get to the truth... i want to know whether it could have been prevented... happy birthday, saffie. find out what happened to saffie and whether she could have survived. to saffie. absolutely. happy birthday, beautiful.

hello! this is saffie and i welcome to my car. this is my dad, this- is my brother, this is me and this is my mum. ijust showed you my family. that's the bag she drew, look, bless her. that was when the nursery teachers came to see us before she started reception. this is the roussos family. mum lisa, dad andrew, brother xander and saffie. i don't think saffie ever sat still.

she'd be singing and dancing andjumping around. just, a very energetic child. very energetic. she loved music that she could move to and dance to. everything was ariana grande, so when we knew she was touring, she was coming to the uk, andrew says, "what do you think about if we get some tickets for christmas?" she couldn't believe it. could not believe it that she was going to go and see ariana grande live. on the actual night, i set out her clothes. i got her a ariana grande t—shirt, i think she got her— little denim skirt on and black leggings. she couldn't believe it. so excited. so happy. she just wanted to get in the arena.

cheering saffie. i knew the concert was finishing just before 22:30. i made them all a sandwich just in case they were hungry. drove up to manchester. i parked up there, waited for them. think it was about 28 minutes past ten. started going up the steps on to the concourse. and i'd got saffie's hand with my left hand, but she was pulling me. she just wanted to get out, to see her dad and xander and obviously tell them what an amazing evening she'd had. so, she was pulling me. and then the next minute,

ijust remember hitting the floor. really, like... ..with a really heavy bang. at 22:31, as the audience was leaving, 22—year—old salman abedi detonated his home—made bomb. saffie and lisa were just five metres away. ijust heard people and children running and screaming, hundreds of people hysterical. i saw these three women and they were crying and ijust said, "what's going on?" theyjust said, "we think a bomb has gone off." i sort of put my arm around xander and i knew that this is, this is serious. you never think in your lifetime you're going to be involved in something like this, you just, it's a surreal moment to be in.

i spoke to a police officer and ijust said, "i'm looking for my wife and my daughter." theyjust said, "have a look around", and basically that's what we did. we just went from person on the floor to person on the floor to person on the floor. i kept thinking, "help's going to come soon, just wait, "help's going to come soon." it felt like a long time before somebody finally came over to me and asked me my name. and all i could say was "saffie", ijust said saffie. cos i wanted them to find her. lisa was taken to hospital with life threatening injuries. andrew finally tracked her down at 06:30 the next morning. so, i went to icu, i took

a look at lisa and ijust walked behind the bed and just broke down. they went through the possibilities of amputation of her hand, her leg, being paralysed from the neck down, and basically 20% chance of survival. lisa was put into a coma. andrew still didn't know where saffie was. this is becoming a nightmare, and it's unfolding to be real. one of the nurses that was with us said, "this is a detective." i said, "i need to know where my daughter is." i said it's 8am. i think he returned at 1230. and he says, "i've asked for a room." he says, "can you make your way to the room?" and... ..that walk to that room is something no human being should take.

it's a cruel life that me and lisa are living, your whole world is just tumbling on the floor and it's just falling. we just know we've got to carry on, particularly forxander. we've lost our daughter, he's lost his little sister. they were very very close. lisa was in hospital for three months. andrew and xander stayed with her. the family never went back to their home in lancashire. me and lisa couldn't face what we had as a family. once lisa left hospital,

i said, "why don't we just move aw ay?" so we just basically escaped. a bit like running away. leaving their old life behind, they moved to dorset and in their new home there's a bedroom for saffie. everything in this room is what she knew, that she'd seen. that's what we wanted. we didn't want anything changing. so, this was originally in saffie's bedroom. some photos of when she was a baby. my first curl, look at that. look how dark her hair was. have you been able to bring yourself to look at these boxes much or is it...? no, first time i've done that one... it's been too hard?

she's here with me and i wouldn't have her anywhere else. two years ago, a public inquiry began into the manchester arena attack and each of the 22 deaths. listening to the inquiry... things went wrong. and they shouldn't have gone wrong. i can understand the sheer panic of that night. i witnessed it myself. you know, it's a horrendous ordeal. what drives me, i suppose, is knowing the information, i want to scrutinise everybody to the point of getting to the truth.

the inquiry is asking could the attack have been prevented and could any of the victims been saved. we are not looking for scape—goats. . we are searching for the truth. let us always remember, - as we consider the evidence, that the person who is directly responsible for this tragedy i is salman abedi. salman abedi was born and raised in south manchester. his parents had left libya in the early 90s to settle here. in 2014, abedi came to the attention of m15. he was 19 years old. soon after, he travelled to war—torn libya. while he was there, his case was closed. abedi made two further round trips to libya, returning just days before the bombing.

we can't stop every attack — of course we can't, but we can stop the ones that are just so transparent, where anybody can see what they're up to. some evidence given by the security services to the manchester arena inquiry has been held in secret due to national security. the family say it's made it hard to know if more could have been done to prevent the attack. questions need to be answered. why weren't you more prepared? why weren't things changed from 7/7, which we're going back many, many years? why do we keep losing our loved ones? good to meet you. and thank you for attending. thank you for coming. in 2017, lord anderson was asked by the government to review the handling of abedi. he was given access inside m15. i personally have a problem with our government and m15 in the handling of the abedi family prior to 2017

and the opportunities missed. it was an appalling atrocity. we spend £3 billion a year in this country on counterterrorism and that night it didn't work. mi5 admitted, to me, at least two things they got wrong. the first thing was when early in 2017 they received intelligence and they interpreted it as probably drugs or organised crime — and not something to do with terrorism or national security. then the second thing was that when salman abedi came back from libya four days before the attack, they could have stopped him or they could have asked the police to stop him at the airport and question him. if either of those things had been different, they are not persuaded that the attack would have been stopped. and although i respect that view, as far as i was concerned that was an open question.

after m15 closed their investigation of abedi in 2014, he went on to visit abdalraouf abdallah in prison, a man convicted of terror offences. despite this, abedi was still not considered a risk to national security. when you go to one of our prisons in this country and you visit the person that he did on a number of occasions, plus making phone calls to this person, that should have been a trigger for m15. i think it's perfectly obvious to anybody that if a known terrorist or extremist is being visited in prison by somebody young and more impressionable then it would make sense to see what intelligence could be gleaned from that encounter. when police investigated abdallah in 2014 they seized his phone. it contained 1,300 messages he'd exchanged with a fellow extremist.

"every day, on every kneeling, i ask my lord for martyrdom."| i mean, that that is totally - the sort of language that you'd expect to see coming out of extremists. i 40 messages a day, over a thousand in a month. l there's an intensity, isn't it, in that conversation? - although police had used the messages to help convict abdallah, they told the inqury they'd never identified his contact. it was salman abedi. you have somebody here - who is very obviously espousing extremist views, is talking - to a person under investigation and subsequently convicted for a terrorist offence. - but then there's . been no follow up. how did it get to a situation whereby the messages were seen by police officers, but no one followed up? i don't know what the workload was in the north—west at that l time, but i imagine. it was very, very high. however, the bit that -

i struggle with is, this is not difficult intelligence to exploit. - and if we're investigating terrorists, you know, - we want to investigate their networks. - i find that inexplicable. m15 say they didn't receive this intelligence before the attack. and it wasn't until the year after the bombing that police identified abedi was behind the messages. lord anderson's 2017 report found gaps in the way intelligence was shared between agencies. it's the sort of thing that involves different organisations working together in an efficient way. and it's the sort of thing that we made recommendations about because it wasn't working as well as it should. but in your opinion, do you think that should have been in place, with the history that we've had up to 2017? well, of course it would have been better if it had have been. no, do you think it should have been? i have to be careful because a high courtjudge, sirjohn saunders...

of course, absolutely, yeah. ..is going to decide if there is blame and where it should be apportioned. that absolutely wasn't myjob. it certainly wasn't perfect prior to 2017 and it's something that should now have been improved. i was looking for honesty through it all, really, and i felt he was being as honest as he possibly could. the only way to make things better is to admit that there's mistakes that need adressing. again, i keep hearing off everybody "lessons learnt" but, you know, we shouldn't lose eight—year—old children to make that point. the inquiry is also looking at how the emergency services responded on the night. greater manchester police were running the initaljoint response. however, i would also like to acknowledge and apologise for failings by greater manchester police. the inquiry has heard there was a catastrophic

breakdown in communication. failure to establish effective inter—service communications was unacceptable and we apologise for this unreservedly. only three paramedics made it in to the blast zone, and it was two hours before the fire service arrived — after the last casualty had been taken out. the inquiry is due to begin hearing evidence about saffie, so the roussos family are returning to manchester. got your stuff packed, xander, that you want to take? chargers, phones. dreading it. really don't want to go. it's giving me sleepless nights, it's made me anxious. it's a horrible, nervy feeling. going to court will be the hardest. going through my statement.

i know it's going to be emotionally draining but just keep saying, "it's for saffie," obviously, and i've got to do it. hi, pete, nicola. how are you? very well. nice to see you both. nice to see you too. after you give your evidence then we go straight to start the evidence of the people that were there who tried to help. stating the obvious, this is very difficult territory for you, i'm very aware of that. evidence disclosed to the roussos' legal team raised questions about whether saffie could have survived the bombing. at the very start the family'sl understanding was that saffie had died straight away.

but saffie lived for- an extended period after she sustained these terrible injuries. - over an hour. and during that time _ she was conscious, she was able to talk, she was able to ask questions. - after the bomb exploded there were fears of a second attack. because of the breakdown in communication between the emergency services, arena workers and members of the public were left to help the injured inside the foyer. paul reid was selling posters that night. it was smokey, and there was people running about screaming, you know. and ijust stood there for probably a minute.

i think my brain was trying to take in what was going on because there was people on the floor. it was hectic. yeah, it was chaos, basically. and then i phoned the police. ijust kept on screaming to send everything and everybody to the arena, to the foyer. there's been an explosion. paul saw saffie and tried to comfort her. i told her not to worry, i asked her her name and i told her not to worry and that more help was going to come in a minute and, yeah... as time went on, did you think, you know, where are the ambulances? they're not here. was it beginning to worry you? it was definitely beginning to worry that nobody was there. there was no medics or... no, no, no. it was definitely worrying me. 26 minutes after the explosion, paul helped carry saffie to the street on an advertising board. saffie was the first person to be taken to hospital after an ambulance heading

to the arena was flagged down. saffie's main injuries - were to her legs, particularly the backs of her knees. and there was obviously a lot of bleeding from those - injuries. unfortunately, - that wasn't noticed. or, wasn't corrected. and if that bleeding i is allowed to continue, eventually you run out| of blood, and the body will shut down. the people around saffie, l many of them did their best in appalling circumstances. but the basic medical techniques that could and should have been used weren't. -

at 11:40pm, more than an hour after the attack, saffie died in hospital. finding out exactly what happened is hard to take because you don't want anyone to suffer, never mind... do you know what i mean? ..your child. it does make you very angry and gets you very upset to know that that little girl did everything she could to keep herself going and the system failed her. and i want to get to the bottom of that. two sets of medical experts gave evidence to the inquiry. one group said saffie's injuries were too severe to survive. the other said it's possible she could've lived if she'd received basic treatment.

we're going to be left wondering, aren't we, and that worries me a little bit. that's an inevitable - consequence of the experts being in disagreement with each other. - obviously, i don't knowi what the chair will make of it eventually. you may get a very clear- conclusion from him one way or the other, or it might be somewhere in the middle. i it's not like a criminal case where you get guilty- or not guilty. it's much less binary. could she have survived? couldn't she? if she could have survived then you then think about the care she was given, or the lack of it. so thatjust throws you into turmoil. and i know that if she was given that chance she would still be here, i really do. today, andrew and lisa will give their statements to the inquiry.

as mum and dad for saffie, really we see it as saffie's voice. and, you know, we believe certain aspects of that night were catastrophically wrong so we're here to make sure it's aired, for thejudge to hear. and it's... it is very important for us to do. it is going to be a tough day. as a human being, a father, i cannot live with myself if i don't voice this. the response on that night was shameful and inadequate. what can we learn from this? the response of the security services on this atrocity should go down in history as one of the worst failures from start to finish. and that's what we should learn from this. thank you. i want to thank those that tried to help saffie that night

and for being with her. i also want to say to the professionals, like the emergency services and mi5, that this inquiry isn't about protecting your job, your reputation or your uniform. we understand the sheer panic and fear you were faced with that night, but until you admit the failings, how can there be a positive change? during the inquiry north west ambulance service said lessons have been learned, but believe there were "no inadequacies" in their response which contributed to saffie's death. greater manchester police and fire services accepted failings in their overall response on the night. counterterrorism police and m15 have both told the inquiry they are sorry the attack wasn't stopped. the inquiry�*s conclusions are expected to be published later this year.

ijust hope the whole process of this inquiry does what it's set out to do, what it's meant to do. ifeel the need to keep pushing for a change, to do the right thing. before leaving manchester, the family visit the memorial dedicated to the lives lost in the attack, to lay a time capsule for saffie. to think someone, another mother, could go through what i've gone through and still going through and will do forever, is just heartbreaking. it'sjust so sad. have you got the stuff for it? what do you want to do? she's not here, mate. she's with us at home.

we'll never be who we were, we'll never have what we had, but saffie is always with us. and we'll take her with us forever.

this is bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: on the frontline, ukrainian soldiers dig in north—west of the capital kyiv, with russian forces circling the city. there is a tangible fear in this place. that that russian offensive that has been stalled may be ready to regain momentum. america bans imports of russian oil and gas, as britain and the eu also target moscow's energy exports. we are enforcing the most significant package of sanctions in history and it is causing significant damage to russia's economy. after days of shelling, a temporary ceasefire means thousands of ukrainians and international students are able to escape the besieged city of sumy.